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crypt analysts. ‘We acknowledged only the discipline we imposed on ourselves’ recalled Peter
Hilton, who was a mere 18 years of age when he joined Hut 8 (see Chapter 3).^25 Turing was head
of Hut 8 and Gordon Welchman, another Cambridge mathematics don, headed Hut 6. Like
Turing, Welchman took up residence at Bletchley Park on 4 September 1939, the day follow-
ing Britain’s declaration of war on Germany.^26 Welchman’s book The Hut Six Story, published
in 1982, was the first detailed account of how Bletchley Park broke Enigma. The authorities
threatened him with prison for revealing classified information.
In Hut 8 Turing was assisted by another mathematician, Peter Twinn, who first joined the
Enigma fight in February 1939, as Dilly Knox’s assistant (see Chapter 11).^27 Turing’s own
name was not added to Denniston’s ‘emergency list’ until March 1939—his list of ‘men of the
Professor type’ who would be called up in the event of war—and Joan Clarke recounted that
Turing was introduced to the Enigma problem ‘in the summer of 1939’.^28 As mathematicians,
Twinn and Turing were rare creatures in the pre-war world of British codebreaking. The Poles
had understood right from the start that Enigma was fundamentally a mathematical problem,
but to the British way of thinking there were, Twinn explained, ‘doubts about the wisdom of
recruiting a mathematician as they were regarded as strange fellows, notoriously unpractical’.^29
Such abstract thinkers, it was felt, lacked ‘appreciation of the real world’.
Other leading lights in Huts 6 and 8 were Stuart Milner-Barry, who played chess for England
and was chess correspondent for The Times, and Hugh Alexander, the British chess champion.
Before the war Alexander had been a director of the department store chain John Lewis. A
skilled and inspirational manager, he eventually took over from Turing as head of Hut 8. Turing
loathed administration, and had always left most of it to Alexander.^30 Alexander had an earthy
sense of humour, and colleagues enjoyed quoting his despairing remark ‘We’ll have to wait,
thumbing our twiddles’.^31
Joan Clarke, one of the few female cryptanalysts, joined Hut 8 in June 1940 and immediately
started work with the prototype bombe, Victory. At Cambridge she had been one of Welchman’s
students. Clarke recollected that when she entered Hut 8’s small inner sanctum, where at that
time the codebreakers had their desks, one of them said to her ‘Welcome to the sahibs’ room’.^32
This was a reference—almost certainly not ironic—to the strictly male enclaves found across
the British Empire. As a female codebreaker her rate of pay was even lower than the Wrens’,
scarcely more than £2 a week.^33 Yet it was Clarke who achieved some of the very first successful
breaks with Victory.^34
The bombes were maintained by a team of Royal Air Force sergeants, 250-strong by the end
of the war, and commanded from the early months by Sergeant Elwyn Jones, who was later
promoted to squadron leader.^35 Like the Wren operators and the codebreakers, these engineers
also worked in three shifts.^36 In the early days their workroom in Hut 1 was also their dining
room and sleeping room.^37 The RAF eventually introduced a special trade category for these
unique crypto-engineers, and their official title became the obfuscating ‘instrument repairer
(tabulating mechanic)’.^38
The outstations
By the end of the war the Letchworth factory had manufactured more than 200 bombes.^39 Most
were situated in two large ‘outstations’ in the London suburbs of Eastcote and Stanmore. Smaller
outstations had been established near Bletchley Park earlier in the war—in converted stables